2. THE SAMPLE

We have collected, from the literature (Table 1),
the emission-line
relative intensities in the spectral range 3700 Å-7000 Å for a sample
of 177 nuclei of emission-line galaxies. According to the diagnostic
diagrams of
Baldwin, Phillips, and
Terlevich (1981),
the sample
galaxies can be classified as Seyfert 2 (90 objects) or LINER (87), on
the basis of their emission-line ratios.